Yet.

The next morning Parker’s toilet didn’t flush.

She panicked. “What the hell is it now?”

A note on the refrigerator door told her Austin didn’t have water when he’d left.

She tossed on yesterday’s clothes and bundled into a coat.

Halfway down the driveway she paused, looked at her breath in the cold winter air.

Small puddles of water were iced over on the driveway.

Instead of walking to the shutoff valves, she stepped through what was left of the ice plant that once lined the driveway to the garden hose that replaced the water main. She lifted it and squeezed.

Frozen.

Relief washed through her and she started to laugh. “I never thought I’d deal with frozen pipes in Southern California.”

When she returned to the house she texted her brother and sister. The hose froze. The water is fine. From now on we fill a bathtub and have water to flush on cold mornings.

Austin texted back immediately with a toilet emoji.

You can just pee outside, she told him.

I did. You’re welcome.

She’d been kidding . . . but whatever.

Mallory texted back. TMI, Austin.

Jelly, big sis?

The whole conversation made Parker smile. The fact that they’d all gotten back to the brother and sister roles took weight off her shoulders. Austin hadn’t relapsed into his rebellion once. God knew he had every excuse if he wanted to. Even though Parker kept the pace as gatekeeper to their family, it didn’t feel like she was playing mom and dad any longer. And that was huge.

She moved through her morning, missing Colin in a way she hadn’t seen coming.

He woke up before she did and brought her coffee in bed. In fact, he had insisted she lie there while he prepared her coffee the way she liked it, and then curled up next to her and drank his first cup of the day with her.

She loved that.

They brushed their teeth alongside each other, and when they were done, Colin picked her up, placed her on the bathroom counter, and kissed her to check how well she’d done the job.

She loved that, too.

He ate whatever she cooked, even if it was a little burnt, without complaint.

That was weird.

And adorable.

She finished her coffee and had a bowl of cereal before going outside to find a shovel.

“Matt will be here in an hour,” Parker informed Erin. She’d already talked to her about an alarm system, which Erin not only wanted, but was willing to pay for. “I thought I’d give you a long enough warning so if you wanted to peace out, you could.”

The property buzzed with men of all shapes and sizes, religions, and races . . . but the only one Erin seemed to fear was Matt.

Unfounded as that may be, it was a reality, and Parker was going to shelter her friend from that fear if she could.

“I’m pathetic.”

Parker stood outside of the guesthouse, her boots caked with mud or she’d invite herself in. She’d been hard at work with her power washer that was doing a fabulous job of taking the final layer of mud off the hardscape throughout the property. Well, maybe not the whole property, but the space closest to the house, pool, and guesthouse. Anytime those spaces could be kept clean, the less time Parker spent vacuuming and scrubbing inside.

It felt as if she’d given up her day job to become a full-time housemaid, gardener, plumber, and cook. And that was okay. It was taking control of what she could. While it didn’t bring in a paycheck, it did bring some satisfaction.

“You’re not pathetic. You’re entitled to your feelings.”

Erin wore a stylish pair of jeans and a long sweater. She looked girl-next-door fresh, clean of makeup with her hair pulled back in a simple clip. Parker envied the look. It was expensive without looking fake.

Most of all it was clean.

Parker forgot what that felt like.

“Thanks,” Erin said.

“Matt would just as soon cut off his right arm than give you a reason to fear him.”

Erin nodded. “I’ll stick around.”

That made Parker happy.

“But if I need to, I’ll make excuses and go.”

She could work with that. “Right, you have that appointment . . . What was it, dentist or something?”

Erin’s smile reached her eyes. “You’re the best.”

“I’m making chicken tacos for dinner. Colin is staying the night so I invited Matt to stay for dinner. You’re welcome to—”

“One hour at a time.”

Parker placed both hands in the air. “Got it.”

Fifty-five minutes later, Matt pulled his truck up Parker’s driveway and parked next to Erin’s car.

She walked across the section of her lawn that hadn’t been affected by mudflow only because it was downstream from her house and protected by it.

Matt waved as he started toward her. He stopped at the garden hose water line and looked down on it. “Is this really your water supply?”

“It works.”

“The firefighter in me is having serious issues with this.”

“Because my house is going to catch fire anytime soon? Take a look around, it’s like Ireland around here.” Everything that wasn’t covered in mud was bright green.

“Didn’t you say there is a junction box closer to the house?”

She waved him over and walked alongside him to the location he mentioned.

He looked inside the box, rubbed his chin a couple of times. “Do you know how the water main runs?”

“I’m not completely positive. There’s no map of it on the property plans, and it’s been modified over the years with each break.” She walked the property with Matt and pointed out where she thought the line ran. So far only a couple hundred feet of garden hose did the trick. On nights like the one coming, she’d turn the water off, unhook the hose over the creek, and wait for the water to recede to hook it all back up.

They walked up to the junction by the gate. It sat behind where the picnic benches had lived for the crew to take their breaks, and right in the path of the Sutter Canyon mudslides.

Colin saw them and walked over. He shook his brother’s hand. “What’s up?”

“Matt’s looking over my hillbilly water main.”

“What is the likelihood of this pipe breaking again?” Matt asked Colin.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent.”

That had Parker frowning. “Really?”

“It’s sticking out of the ground and has been hammered twice.”

“When it happens again, I say we move it,” Matt told his brother.

She shook her head. “This is all working for now. Let’s focus on alarm systems today, shall we?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“It’s not going to take much,” Matt told Parker and Erin after he poked around the guesthouse for about thirty minutes. “Having the phone line is key, and that’s already in.”

“Will it be possible for this system to tell me if the gate has opened, like it does up at the main house?” Erin asked.

“That I don’t know.”

“The gate was installed long before the guesthouse was built,” Parker said.

“If there’s a way to link the line down here, I’ll do it.” Matt was trying so hard to keep a distance from Erin. She, too, was hanging back and avoiding eye contact.